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A Momentous Day for Gay Rights

In a surprise ruling, SCOTUS ruled that a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional for having no legitimate purpose.

"The case on the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, considered the part of the law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for purposes of federal benefits. The decision on the federal law was 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing the majority opinion, which the four liberal-leaning justices joined. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

This is a surprise ruling given the Court's conservative stance on the affirmative action and Voting Rights Act cases released in recent days.

In a not-so-surprise ruling, SCOTUS avoided the merits of the Prop 8 issue and decided the case on procedural standing grounds. But it does leave open the opportunity for states to decide whether gay marriage will be permitted within their boundaries.

"The rulings leave in place laws banning same-sex marriage around the nation ..., but in clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California, the nation’s most populous state, the court effectively increased to 13 the number of states that allow such unions."

I love that social media is blowing this up in a positive way. My Facebook news feed is full of friends applauding the decision and discussing its ramifications, and I rarely see my friends discussing SCOTUS. Twitter's trending hastags are #DOMA, #SCOTUS, and #loveislove. #loveislove was started by Barack Obama's tweet: "Retweet if you believe everyone should be able to marry the person they love. #LoveIsLove"

This is a telling sign of where the American populace sits on the issue. The ramifications of leaving gay marriage up to the states will be interesting to follow. What will happen when a couple who is married legally in one state moves to another state where gay marriage is illegal? I suppose we'll have to wait for another day when SCOTUS takes it up again, and it makes it to the merits.

The current version of Standard 601(3)(a) was developed during the Comprehensive Review as a method of involving a law library in the process of strategic planning required of a law school. It was envisioned that the planning and assessment taking place for a law school (under what was then Standard 203) would incorporate the work done by the library under this new Standard. To ensure that incorporation, it was decided that a written assessment should be completed by the library. However, when the requirement for strategic planning for a law school was removed during a later phase of the Comprehensive Review, no change was made to the new Standard 601. As a result, the library community has been left…

Law libraries are in the information business. To act as superior guides to this information, we must also be in the people business. We must be concerned with the people who seek our information. And we must be concerned with the people who guide those seekers to the information (i.e., our staff).

Contrary to popular belief, it's not easy to be a staff person in the rigid hierarchy of an academic law library. Particularly at a time when law libraries are facing increased budget pressures that require staff to do much more with much less. This is especially challenging with longtime staff who have seen their jobs change dramatically since they were hired. Many of these folks were not formally trained in librarianship, and they may be resistant to the flexibility needed in today's law library.

Given these challenges, how do we motivate our staff to be the very best guides to our information?

To that end, there was an enlightening program at the AALL Annual Conference in 2013 t…

As we further consider how to train future lawyers for the Algorithmic Society and develop the quality of thinking, listening, relating, collaborating, and learning that will define smartness in this new age, law schools must reach beyond their storied walls.

In law, we must got beyond talking about algorithmic implications to actually help shape algorithmic performance. We need lawyers and programmers to work together to create a sound "machine learning corpus." There's potential for an entirely new subfield to emerge if given the right support. With many law school attached to major research universities, it's a great place to start this cross-pollination and interdisciplinary work.

This type of interdisciplinary work would help to satisfy the career aspirations of advanced-degree seekers but also the wishes of many college presidents, deans, and faculty members who see an interdisciplinary professional education as a path to greater relevance, higher enrollments,…